Maoist Threat In India

The Communist Party of India (Maoist) is a Maoist political party in India which aims to overthrow the government of India. It was founded on September 21, 2004, through the merger of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) People's War and the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCC). The merger was announced to the public on October 14 the same year. In the merger a provisional central committee was constituted, with the erstwhile People's War Group leader Muppala Lakshmana Rao alias Ganapathi as General Secretary.

The Naxalites, Naxals or Naksalvadis are a Maoist communist group in India, leaders of the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency.

Their name comes from the village of Naxalbari in the Indian state of West Bengal where the movement originated, and the group are far-left radical communists, supportive of Maoist political sentiment and ideology. Their origin can be traced to the split in 1967 of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), leading to formation of Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist). Initially the movement had its centre in West Bengal. In recent years, it has spread into less developed areas of rural central and eastern India, such as Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh through the activities of underground groups like the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

As of 2009, Naxalites are active across approximately 220 districts in twenty states of India accounting for about 40 percent of India's geographical area, They are especially concentrated in an area known as the "Red corridor", where they control 92,000 square kilometers. According to India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, 20,000 armed cadre Naxalites were operating apart from 50,000 regular cadres working in their various mass organizations and millions of sympathisers, and their growing influence prompted Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to declare them as the most serious internal threat to India's national security.

The Naxalites are opposed by virtually all mainstream Indian political groups. In February 2009, Central government announced its plans for broad, co-ordinated operations in all affected states (Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal), to plug all possible escape routes of Naxalites.

India has no one to blame but itself for the rise and growth of the Maoists. Unlike violence by groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, both tagged with the terrorist label and whose attacks the government can attribute to Pakistan's support, the roots of the Maoists lie squarely in India, in the failure of the Indian state to address extreme poverty in vast stretches of rural India.

Maoist violence is no doubt brutal. It has laid bare the callousness of the Indian state, its failure to deliver good governance and to respond to the plight of the poorest and most marginalized sections of its population.

Analysts are cautioning the government against excessive focus on military methods to deal with a problem that is primarily political.

Recently, Chidambaram said he wanted Maoist-controlled areas to be liberated before any development programs could be launched there. There is concern that this "crackdown first, development later" is wrongly sequenced given the fact that it is the absence of development that has resulted in the emergence and growth of Maoism in the first place. "Development efforts should be an important part of the strategy to defeat them [Maoists]," points out an editorial in Deccan Herald. "To think that they can follow the campaign is to put the cart before the horse."

Mahendra Kumavat, a retired director-general of the Border Security Force who had over a decade's experience in fighting Maoists in the Andhra-Orissa-Chhattisgarh, area says that "the government is going to lose more hearts and minds to the Maoists if it forges ahead with a strike policy that brings nothing but bloodshed and disruption to people in the affected zones". It is "going to multiply our problems, not solve them", he warned.

As India prepares to unleash a war against its own citizens, a campaign is underway to discredit the Maoists. And what better way than to draw parallels with the Taliban? Media reports have described the beheading of the Jharkhand cop as a "Taliban-style killing", while the Maoists were referred to as the "Red Taliban".

Interestingly, this is not the first time that Maoists have decapitated their victims. Ajay Sahni, executive director of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management argues "it was common for Naxalites [as Maoists are often called in India] of various hues to 'shorten' a man by a foot, 'from the top'. Over the past years, after the formation of the CPI (Maoist), there have been several such incidents [of beheading]."

None of these beheadings were described as "Taliban-style beheadings". It is only after the government decided to take on the Maoists head-on that such analogies have emerged in the media.

Home Ministry officials seem excessively optimistic about the new offensive. "We hope that within 30 days of security forces moving in and dominating the area, we should be able to restore civil administration there," Home Secretary G K Pillai said last week.

Many in India do not think so.

The Maoists might melt away when confronted by the might of the Indian state but they will return to strike back. The Maoists in an earlier avatar were brutally crushed by the Indian state in the early 1960s. They regrouped in subsequent years.

They have indicated that they intend to inflict heavy losses. Describing themselves as "respectable citizens and patriots", they have appealed to the IAF to "not strike at sons and daughters of the soil".

Should the IAF do so, they would "teach the center [the federal government] a lesson that no other revolutionary force has taught them".

"Be prepared for a befitting retribution," the Maoists have warned.